United Nations:
In his speech at the opening of the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders this week, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres vowed to applause that he would “not give up” on efforts to get food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine to global markets.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United Nations blamed the war for worsening the global food crisis and a new diplomatic redline emerged, with Moscow and Kiev attempting to win over those most affected: poor and developing countries. Were fighting for.
The fight came to the forefront this week at the high-level UN General Assembly, where applause for Guterres’s comments on Tuesday underlined the pressure on those countries, particularly from the Global South, for major powers to focus on their most important Did. Challenges.
Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Philippe Pierre said, “We are no longer willing to come to this annual parade to lend our voice in support of this or that global conflict or to condemn someone as the new global enemy year after year Are.” “The global agenda of any powerful country is not more important than our agenda,” he told the General Assembly.
However, it is not clear whether meetings at the UN this week will bring any quick relief to countries struggling to feed their people – particularly the revival of a historic agreement that allowed the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain. Which was given by Russia twice. months ago.
Guterres met separately this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and is also scheduled to meet Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, but is expected to revive a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022. Efforts to do so have yielded no apparent success.
The absence of four of the five leaders of the permanent members of the UN Security Council – US President Joe Biden was the only one to attend – has further deepened suspicions among developing countries.
“That’s not how you build trust. That’s not how you show solidarity. That’s not accountability, and that’s not leadership,” Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera told the General Assembly, referring to the absence of the other four leaders.
Richard Gowan, UN director for the International Crisis Group, said at this week’s meetings, with geopolitical tensions rising – particularly the rivalry between the United States, Russia and China – developing countries made the most of their situation.
Gowan said, “Developing countries know that the US, China and Russia all want their support at the UN. They successfully leveraged their new influence to ensure that the UN focused on their economic concerns this week. “
At the top of that list of concerns is solving the global food crisis. Both Ukraine and Russia are major grain exporters and Moscow is also a major supplier of fertilizer to the world.
“The world desperately needs Ukrainian food and Russian food and fertilizers to stabilize markets and guarantee food security,” Guterres told the General Assembly.
Kenyan President William Ruto, speaking at the World Economic Forum in New York, said the war in Ukraine had caused “prices of essential commodities such as food, fuel and fertilizer to rise, exacerbating the plight of vulnerable countries and communities.”
